Johannesburg, 21 Feb 2017
The telecommunications services market, which includes fixed-network services and mobile services, had a value of around 1.5 trillion US dollars in 2015, and is forecast to grow to almost 1.7 trillion US dollars in size by 2019. The biggest markets for telecoms services are the Asia/Pacific region, Europe and North America.
Mobile and wireless technologies have become more prevalent in the past 15 years. The market is expected to continue to gain space in the telecommunications services industry, as the number of mobile connections worldwide is predicted to reach nine billion by 2020, about twice the amount of 2009.
Statistics South Africa published the General Household Survey report last month, with statistics about South African households in 2013, including a section about Internet and telecommunications.
The main finding was that 40.9% of South African households had at least one member who either used the Internet at home or had access to it elsewhere - which, on the surface, sounds like a promising number, until you find out that only 10% of households had Internet access at home. This effectively means they used the access they got elsewhere to go online.
Unfortunately, companies require communication systems to enable them to conduct business, which includes both voice and data systems. As employees spend a lot of time at work, they believe they can use the company facilities to communicate with their friends and family. This is not only limited to phone calls, but includes using e-mail plus social networking applications.
Why is this issue so important to companies, you ask?
Telecoms abuse can be broadly described as the use of company phones or Internet for the benefit of the individual, to the extent that their productivity or key objectives are not met or there are additional expenses associated with this use.
Additional expenses:
The need to increase capacity to support actual business needs like conduct research on prospective clients.
Productivity costs:
The lack of productivity associated with spending personal time using company equipment to communicate with their friends and family on tools like Facebook.
Loss of income:
Costs associated with clients not getting services due to lack of capacity to service them - telephone lines are congested; mail is delayed.
To support both the company objectives as well as the staff expectations, policies should be put in place to manage the behaviour of the staff in a means that provides them with the visibility of their actions and the effect it has on the business through the setting of budgets.
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